


The One Where Two Virgins Talk About Dean Winchester

by inplayruns



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:56:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inplayruns/pseuds/inplayruns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy gets a visitor in her Heaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Two Virgins Talk About Dean Winchester

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 3.12, "Jus in Bello," 4.22, "Lucifer Rising," and sorta 5.16, "Dark Side of the Moon." Meant to take place between 4.22 and 5.01, and pre-Dean/Castiel. Unbetaed, all mistakes are my own.

Nancy knows her memory loop is coming to an end when the Winchester brothers show up, cramped together in this little side cell. She knows she should be bitter about it, or feel something other than pity for how hard she knows their lives are, now. But that's a thing about Heaven: you never get angry at anything. The bad emotions - you understand them, but they're just _there_. She knows the fear when Sam grabbed her wrists, and she can even still feel the way the bones there shifted a little closer when he clenched down with his fingers, but that was, literally, a lifetime ago.

Time fades, and Dean's talking about salt while she carefully cleans up his shoulder. It wasn't a bad wound at all, and the two brothers had done a pretty good job cleaning it up. She wasn't sure what was going on one hundred percent, but she'd felt okay with them there. Or maybe she'd been more panicked than that - she remembers saying something to Dean about demons - but her memories have been altered slightly, smoothed over. Heaven has no potholes or ugly snags.

"How you holdin' up, Nancy?" Dean asks with this little smile, like he has a hundred times before.

It's not at all bad here. It's _Heaven_ , after all. After a couple of millennia, maybe it'll get lonely - and heck, maybe she has been here for millennia already, she doesn't know - but for now, she's fine, remembering all the friends from elementary school she adored and fell out of touch with. She feels connected to these memories. But if she could improve one thing, she'd like to live through... fantasies, she guesses. She'd show the life where she went to college instead of straight to work right after high school. And she'd definitely experience - shoulder be damned - Dean shoving her up against the wall after they'd fought off all the demons, and sliding his hands up her silly frilly blouse, looking at her and smiling. There had been something about his smile, wide and welcoming, and yet just for her at the same time -

She finishes cleaning up Dean's shoulder. The memory fades, and they all begin anew. She's a little dark-haired girl, playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with her equally wide-eyed sisters. It was only her, Olivia, and Emma, so there's a spare, and they all shriek trying to snap it down, and Nancy misses them so much. One of her hands slides out over Emma's shoulder because she's closer, but she keeps going, half-crazed.

That's when a man she's never seen before shows up. No, not a man. It's probably Heaven, but she can tell that this person-shaped thing that just appeared in her memory isn't human, and never was. It's a nice-looking human suit, though, weary eyes that ache they're so blue, thick and rough-looking lips, and near-black hair that, no shit, looks actually windswept.

"Hello?" Nancy asks, standing up.

"You are the one Dean Winchester would not let sacrifice herself in that jail in Colorado," he responds, and his voice is gravel and church bells at once. "Hello, Nancy."

She boggles at him for a minute, and she's pretty sure her mouth's actually gaping a little bit. Just, all sense of shame went away in Heaven. "Who are you?"

"Castiel," he says, like that explains everything. "I am an Angel of the Lord, only..."

"Angels don't end up here. Not in this part of Heaven."

"No." He sits down, cross-legged and almost cautious, and observes a new memory that's leaked onto the surface. She's whisked by a few just talking to Castiel. It's Nancy in elementary school, laughing loud as she pumps her legs to get higher, and higher, and higher, on a swing set. Her mother pushes her, cross glinting in the sunlight; her smile seems even brighter. Castiel watches the scene from a bench a little while away, until his eyes lower. He looks guilty and lonely at once, emotions Nancy doesn't really remember from Heaven but can recognize.

"What's wrong?" She sits next to him on the bench, before it dissolves into a seat at a long table. Dishes overflowing with food line the table, a plump turkey in the middle, and her hands pour cranberry sauce all over her plate, even over the stuffed mushrooms, as she talks.

Castiel's plate is untouched. "I would not have done that," he sighs. This angel's awfully glum for Heaven. "Ruby is manipulative, and she... but she was correct, there."

Nancy doesn't really know what he's talking about, but it's like Heaven sneaks into her brain, and she learns Ruby was the pretty blonde helping the brothers. She wasn't human, either, but she was a demon, not an angel. "Why are you here?" Nancy asks, holding her mother's hand as she walks by a long, dry field in a zoo; bears sleep behind the wall of glass.

For a minute or two, Castiel stares forward. Nancy wonders if she heard him. Then, he responds. "Because Dean taught me mercy like that."

Nancy snorts. She only just notices, now, that Castiel's holding her hand in this memory, not her mother. It's comforting. "You're an angel. Of course you're merciful."

When Castiel tilts his head toward her, she would startle, if not for Heaven's soothing influence; his eyes are blown tremendously wide, and they're shiny. She no longer feels that aching through her heart and chest, but it's the saddest thing she has ever seen. "We're warriors. I commanded the specialists, for a while," he murmurs. "Uriel was rather tame, considering. And low-ranking. Almost anyone higher-up would have likely sensed Sam's demon blood and smote him on the spot." A little smile sneaks across his face, and you can tell he is unused to that, but it's still tremendously sad.

Uriel is another angel. The specialists, they purified towns. And she knows what purifying implies. Heaven's quiet little revelations are beautiful and terrifying alike.

She's driving her drunk friends home. This must have been high school or so, because she remembers the high giggling from the backseat, and Molly's silly questions from the passenger seat that honestly only endeared her to Nancy, even though she's been told she was supposed to be frowning on underage drinking. It's bizarre to glance in the rear view mirror and catch a glimpse of Castiel, hands folded neatly over his lap, in the back seat with all of them. "I was supposed to watch Dean Winchester in the green room. Not that he would escape, but. I freed him, I _died_ , and the world will still burn. And... you know what."

It's a question, but the answers just come in Heaven. "You don't regret it," she responds, softly.

"I would do it again."

There's a soft light, then, in this dark, cramped car. Nancy blinks, because it's never been here before, but she's not afraid. In fact, it's the opposite; she feels so beautifully calm, and she breathes just to keep drawing it in. She hears a strangled cry, a silence, and then a whispered _yes_. "Goodbye, Nancy," Castiel's voice rings out after a few minutes, suddenly stronger and softer at once. "Your sacrifice was not for naught, nor anyone's. I'll see to that. Dean, as well."

Castiel learned that from Dean, though how Nancy realizes this she doesn't know, other than the ever-present explanation of _Heaven_. Castiel's been sent back to Earth, by something so powerful she cannot begin to recognize it in her mind, even here, to help him. He'd helped him tremendously already.

Nancy peeks out the window of the car door, and imagines she can see an enormous pair of sooty wings carrying the trenchcoated body back to where she came from. She smiles. Then Molly's asking her, loudly, about whether they can stop for McDonald's, and Castiel fades away, no longer part of this realm of existence.

He takes the memory of those huge, sad eyes with him, but she remembers his private look on the bench at the playground, like something had been missing. She hopes he finds it, and that he can keep Dean safe as much as anyone could.


End file.
